from the support-techdirt dept
Should you’re questioning what unbiased journalism that received’t bend to White Home stress seems to be like, you’re taking a look at it.
On Sunday evening, CBS Information’ newly imported “editor in chief,” Bari Weiss, killed a 60 Minutes story about Trump’s unlawful deportations to a Salvadoran focus camp—hours earlier than it was set to air. Why? As a result of it’d upset the White Home. And since Weiss apparently doesn’t perceive how tv manufacturing works, she waited so lengthy to kill it that it nonetheless obtained despatched to international companions, that means the story she tried to bury unfold all around the web anyway.
An ideal Streisand Impact, and an ideal illustration of what occurs once you hand editorial management to somebody extra thinking about defending energy than difficult it.
Supporting Techdirt means supporting a information group that received’t kill tales to please anybody in energy. Not now, not ever.
The story itself was fairly typical 60 Minutes fare, and in some methods fairly much like a PBS Frontline piece, Surviving CECOT, that was launched a couple of weeks earlier. The principle new floor within the 60 Minutes story was that solely about 3% of these Venezuelans illegally despatched to CECOT truly had violent prison data (opposite to what the administration claimed). There was additionally some additional proof displaying that CECOT nearly definitely violated the human rights of everybody within the focus camp.
Right here at Techdirt, we’ve been masking the story of the unlawful and unconscionable actions of the Trump administration, transport these males to a focus camp in El Salvador from the start.
Whereas some have demanded that we “stick with tech” when an administration ships human beings to a contemporary torture camp primarily based on nothing greater than having tattoos, that’s everybody’s story to cowl. If you wish to “stick with tech,” be happy to go elsewhere. And if you wish to get White Home authorized speaking factors and “view from nowhere” reporting, apparently CBS Information is now there for you.
However if you wish to know what all of this truly means and why it’s vital, stick round.
Right here’s the distinction between us and CBS Information: Techdirt has been round for almost 30 years exactly as a result of we don’t have a Bari Weiss. We don’t have tens of millions in enterprise capital or billionaire backers telling us what we will and may’t say. We’re nimble, we’re unbiased, and we reply to our readers—to not energy.
However that independence comes at a value. The value of a single 30-second TV business on 60 Minutes might fund Techdirt for months. And proper now, organizations that used to sponsor our work are backing away—not as a result of they disagree with our reporting, however as a result of they’re afraid Trump will come after them for supporting it.
So if you’d like unbiased reporting that received’t bend to White Home stress, we want your assist. Again us at $100 or extra between now and January fifth, and we’ll ship you Techdirt’s first-ever problem coin—commemorating 30 years of Part 230, the legislation that makes remark sections and social media sharing potential, and which is beneath fixed assault from the very individuals we’re masking.
Or hell, do it to spite the individuals who assume journalism ought to serve energy as a substitute of difficult it. Both means works for us.
We promise we’ll put it to raised use than any of the billionaire owned and managed media orgs on the market.
Filed Underneath: bari weiss, unbiased journalism, journalism
Corporations: cbs, techdirt
